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I Violated a Code of Conduct

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Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#781

Post by politician »

wrsh07 wrote: post #737
finnthehuman wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You inadvertently gave away the game. We can all agree that everyone has the right to be arbitrary and capricious. Codes of conduct are a formalization of expectations and rules for behavior. The are often tied (explicitly or implicitly) to an adjudication and enforcement process much more complicated than the person in charge just saying "get the fuck out". However when someone brings up the idea of improving that b…

I think in your cynicism you've totally lost all meaning and purpose of the code of conduct It's not a piece of legalese with which you can bludgeon people to get your way (I mean it can be, but that is not and should not be the point) When an organization has a code of conduct, it makes clear how I can complain about actions or events that occur under their jurisdiction. This is important because if you have high fr…

These documents don't stop at describing the appropriate mechanism for reporting an incident, but rather they address topics of remediation and punishment: topics of justice.

defen points out that when these constitutions tread into topics of justice, they would do well to consider how to set up a fair system and what common mistakes to avoid.

This is a reasonable point and should not be at all controversial. Do you want fair treatment?

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#782

Post by manux »

brigandish wrote: post #347

I've never seen a CoC used to help protect a community, only to protect certain already powerful members within a community and give them a tool with which to beat others. Lately I've been actively avoiding giving my time to open source projects that have CoC's like the Contributor Covenant[1], mainly because - if my experience is anything to go by - they are a strong signal that the kind of people I wish to avoid wi…

> improve the world in objective ways

Not to get all relativist, but "improve" and "objective" in the same sentence is quite the oxymoron. Ask any two randomly picked people in the world how to improve said world and you'll find they have very different, subjective, ideas of what that means.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#783

Post by jawarner »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #779
jawarner wrote: post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

gwbas1c did not reject the idea that CoCs could be used as a weapon. They rejected that is their only use case. barumi referenced OP article as an example of CoC as a weapon. pindab0ter argues this not a fault in the CoC itself per se, but in how it was enforced.

> pindab0ter argues this not a fault in the CoC itself per se, but in how it was enforced. That's a rather charitable interpretation. The context here was weaponization of CoCs, and OP article was referenced as an example of this weaponization. It seems very clear to me that spindab0ter was arguing that this is not an example of weaponizing the CoC. Your alternative interpretation doesn't really resonate for me, beca…

pindab0ter's idea, as I read it, is that no, CoCs are not inherently weapons to exclude people for no reason. They typically language about what constitutes bigotry. In the OP, yes, the CoC was weaponized, but it doesn't reflect a necessary fault in CoCs in general.

Edit: I'm not sure what is even meant by "weaponize." Is the implication that somebody at the conference had vendetta against OP? It's clear that CoCs give people more power, which is a weapon, in a sense. Would reporting someone for CoC violation for sexual misconduct at a conference be an example of weaponization?

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#784

Post by throwaway894345 »

newscracker wrote: post #184

After reading the entire post, I feel really bad for him, and I hope he gets the time off and the support necessary to recover from this incident. I also feel quite angry with how he has been treated. So please let me vent it out here as politely as I’m able to. I can imagine something like this or worse happening on social media groups, but an ostentatious “committee” that listens only to one side and never gives th…

> an ostentatious “committee” that listens only to one side and never gives the other side the chance to get details on how things were perceived or why it’s a violation?

If this upsets you, definitely do not research Title IX tribunals.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#785

Post by newacct583 »

tosh wrote: post #3

If you haven't yet: I think both talks are very worth watching: I don't like notebooks ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jiPeIFXb6U ) by Joel Grus I like notebooks ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q6sLbz37gk ) by Jeremy Howard notebooks are a very interesting medium and they have both shortcomings as well as things they are great at and neither were totally obvious to me.

Why is this comment, and not the culture war nonsense, not at the top of the page?

Having watched Howard's talk, clearly he's right and the conference was wrong. This was respectful and appropriate, period. Someone clearly had an axe to grind about a separate topic.

That said, some of the comments here are just off the wall paranoia, and really distasteful. I mean, look: while it was enforced badly it's certainly not innapropriate for a conference to demand, y'know, that it's speakers not be assholes. There was a real and pretty awful culture in the open source world about this stuff for a long time, and it's a good thing that we're cleaning that up.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#786

Post by umvi »

HideousKojima wrote: post #725
bccdee wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why should rules exist? We should just operate on intuitive feelings of what is or isn't acceptable all the time." Why NOT formalize rules to some extent? Having a hidden set of implicit mores is far worse. In fact, you can easily read this post as a pro-COC argument. After all, the author is able to make a really strong case that he didn't really infringe on any part of the COC, and that the COC was poorly construc…

>Why NOT formalize rules to some extent? Because, at least in the case of CoCs in open source, the sorts of people most vocally pushing to implement and enforce them are almost invariably of the sort most likely to use them as political weapons and enforce them lopsidedly.

Exactly. 99% of the time, CoC gets ignored. The 1% of the time it is exercised, it's because some random person with a chip on their shoulder from Twitter is looking for blood.

"Boot this developer from your project because they made a remark on social media I was offended by."

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#787

Post by javier10e6 »

I watched both presentations in youtube. Joel presentation was a critique on a web tool. Jeremy presentation was a rebuttal, perhaps a bit sanguine. The overuse of satirical memes will get ruffled feathers. All in all the whole thing seems petty.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#788

Post by 4bpp »

tptacek wrote: post #381
defen wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I think we should generalize more, beyond codes of conduct: If you are building an adjudication process for resolving non-criminal personal conflicts (whether that be a Code of Conduct, an HR department, a Title IX proceeding, a professional organization, or something else), you should take a look at Anglo-derived common law and the safeguards against abuse that have been evolved over the centuries. That…

Your premise is that, rather than free association, every group of people owes a kind of due process to everyone else, presumptive of their right to associate. Sorry, I disagree: people can decide they don't want to associate with you or me for reasons we don't find justifiable. I can throw a party and not invite you simply for writing this comment; I can start a project and not allow you to contribute. You can relat…

There's a disconnect here in that your argument presumes that we are talking about groups of people which organically and unanimously decided to install a CoC as a guideline or explanation on how exactly they are going to exercise their right to free association. However, the scenery that opponents of the CoC-associated culture typically see, and consider the modal scenario to be opposed, is that CoC proponents demand that groups of people that do not initially include them (or at least that they are a fairly marginal minority in) institute CoCs. Quite often, this also includes an implicit or explicit demand to install an outsider belonging to the "CoC proponent" group in a position that has wide-ranging powers to interpret the CoC. (After all, someone not properly trained might commit a rookie mistake such as thinking that in the story this thread is about, the enforcers were actually the ones who violated the CoC!) Consider the now-famous example of the person who first wanted to impose a CoC on Ruby canvassing/thinking out loud about removing Matz from his BDFL position.

You could argue that, if someone tells me to install a CoC or else (they will complain to my employer, and spread the message that I am a bad person), they are just exercising their right to free association and/or helping my employer and anyone who may see that messaging exercise theirs, but I think that this is very close to being a free association counterpart of the "free speech" defense of blatant slanderous misinformation, or people using a public list of businesses operated by members of a minority to inform their non-patronage.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#789

Post by zarkov99 »

bccdee wrote: post #695
ALittleLight wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rebuilt? Why? Do you read the code of conduct when you attend a conference? Personally, I haven't even read the code of conduct for my job, and certainly wouldn't read one if I was speaking at or attending a conference. The CoCs are completely unnecessary and, as shown in this example, arbitrarily enforced. In the blog post I read that their CoC prohibits threats and assaults. Consider how silly that is. If someone's…

"Why should rules exist? We should just operate on intuitive feelings of what is or isn't acceptable all the time." Why NOT formalize rules to some extent? Having a hidden set of implicit mores is far worse. In fact, you can easily read this post as a pro-COC argument. After all, the author is able to make a really strong case that he didn't really infringe on any part of the COC, and that the COC was poorly construc…

The vast majority of rules are implicit and to make them explicit you have to put in place the machinery of the law or something like it. This CoC nonsense is a childish and incompetent attempt at solving a complex problem which arguably is leaving us worse off than we started. This is very representative of the extraordinary mixture of hubris, self-loathing and ignorance that characterizes our age.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#790

Post by [deleted] »

umvi wrote: post #786
HideousKojima wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why NOT formalize rules to some extent? Because, at least in the case of CoCs in open source, the sorts of people most vocally pushing to implement and enforce them are almost invariably of the sort most likely to use them as political weapons and enforce them lopsidedly.

Exactly. 99% of the time, CoC gets ignored. The 1% of the time it is exercised, it's because some random person with a chip on their shoulder from Twitter is looking for blood. "Boot this developer from your project because they made a remark on social media I was offended by."

[deleted]
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